Wednesday, September 30, 2015

12:38 PM

Gov. Scott Walker’s job approval continued to drop in the latest Marquette University Law School poll, dipping to 37 percent.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump took over the top spot in the GOP primary, and Hillary Clinton's support at the front of the Dem pack was steady. Russ Feingold also saw his lead over U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, bump back up.

Taken in the days after Walker dropped out of the presidential race, the survey found 59 percent of registered voters disapproved of the job he was doing. In the last Marquette poll conducted in August, Walker’s job approval rating split was 39-57.

Since dropping out, Walker has said he may run for a third term. The poll, though, found 35 percent would support another Walker bid, while 62 percent did not want to see him run again.

The survey also found a shakeup in the GOP primary with Walker now out of the field. He was in first place at 25 percent in the last poll.

Now, Donald Trump leads the GOP field at 20 percent, up from 9 percent. Ben Carson was next at 16 percent, Marco Rubio at 14 percent and Carly Fiorina at 11 percent. No one else broke double digits.

The poll found if Walker had stayed in the race, he would have been at 28 percent.

On the Dem side, Clinton was at 42 percent with Bernie Sanders at 30 percent and Joe Biden, who has not said if he will run, at 17 percent. In August, Clinton was at 44 percent, Sanders 32 and Biden 12.

In the U.S. Senate race, Feingold led Johnson 50-36. In August, Feingold was up 47-42.

The survey of 803 registered voters was conducted Thursday through Monday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percent points. Forty-five percent of the interviews were done via cellphone with the rest over land lines.

The subsample of 321 Republicans and GOP-leaning independents had a margin of error of plus or minus 6.5 percentage points, while the questions asked of the 394 Dem and Dem-leaning independents had a margin of error of plus or minus 5.9 percentage points.